Vincent: No, I don't know EPYC. I'll familiarize myself with the game. As for Rickard's objections - I think we may agree. This part seems crucial to me:

find out what these characters will make of their world—roleplaying games are really good at doing this

I share this sentiment and that's why I think it is too vague. It's not that it is valid per se, it's just not very helpful.

Another angle I could take would be this: Gordon stated that goal of the game can build any type of relation with characters' goals. I disagree. It should be OK for players' goals to misalign with characters' goals, but ultimately characters are part of the game, they exist in the same space and object of the game should be a generalization of object of any and every character. In other words object of a game limits the space in which objects of characters can "move". Otherwise characters are trying to break the game (or perhaps players by using their characters are?). It would be an interesting experiment though.

Another way I think about it is that characters that have objects that are not in the same space as the object of the game is are drifting.